Dark Redemption
by Teri Archer
Summary: Angel has fallen into darkness. The horrors of her past and challenges of her present haunt every moment. As rage and fear threaten to consume her and her new family she heads out alone to face the sun. But Ardal has been hunting her from his first breath and he isn't about to let her go now. As Angel struggles with her past and a possible future she realises something is hunting t


It was dark by the time Angela got home from school. It had been her last day, last day ever in the old, strange smelling corridors and cold classrooms. The last day of sitting through lessons trying to hide her pencils held together with sellotape or books with beer stains on. The last day someone would be worried if she got bruises on her face. The last day someone would come looking for her if she died in the night.

She had fought off the two 'friends' who had tried to sign her shirt but she had still ended up with ink on one cuff. She was upset, she needed the shirt to go to work on Saturday, the start of her career in the tiny dirty shop run by a friend of her dad's she was supposed to call 'Uncle'. She did not like 'Uncle', she did not like the shop and the bolt on the storeroom door or the thin belt hung up by the till. She did not think 'Uncle' would ask questions if she died in the night, she did not think he would care.

The bag dug into the bruise on her shoulder, there would be another one on her back later for making her shirt dirty and another if they found out the shoes she was wearing were too small for her. She often got in trouble for outgrowing her clothes. 'We're not made of money you ungratefully little bitch' he would scream at her. She never spoke back, just hoped that he would not get the chain off it's hook by his chair and tell her to take off her shirt so it didn't get blood on it.

Then she picked up her step. Daniel would be home tonight, her brother had one day off a week and this was it. He had been talking about taking her to the cinema with some of the paycheque he'd managed to hang onto. If he did they would stay round his friends house and she would be allowed to sleep somewhere you didn't have to push the chest in front of the door or go to the toilet in a bucket in the middle of the night because you might make a noise and disturb his football game on the tv. She could pack clothes for work tomorrow so she could go straight there. Her mother wouldn't mind, she didn't mind anything these days, not since the belt had taken off it's hook.

Angela had her own key and let herself in as quietly as she could. The sounds of the tv came from the upstairs flat but no footsteps. Good she hadn't disturbed him. The door was hard to open but Angela shoved it until it moved enough to squeeze through. She took her shoes off in the small hall so her parents wouldn't see how badly they fitted. There was something wet underfoot, Angela did not look down at first. Sometimes there was difficultly finding the toilet in the middle of the game and the hall was close, but this time there was no smell to the wetness. Her blistered foot hit something soft at the bottom of the stairs and she looked down.

She recognised the blue jumper, she had bought it for him with some money she found in the street, but that was all she recognised. There was blood on the floor, blood and hair where the top of her brothers head had been and blood up the stairs. As she rolled him over his skin was cold, his face was a mess of broken skin. Her insides went numb as she stood up, there was blood on her hand now and her socks, had they noticed Daniel, had he fallen.

Angela went up the stairs careful to tread only on the blood marks already there. When she reached the top she could already her the sound of the weeping woman in the kitchen over the tv blearing nearby. Her mother knew, but she wouldn't call for help without her father's permission. Her father had his back to her, the game had five minutes to go but she knew she'd never forgive herself if she waited.

"Sir. I think Daniels hurt himself." She stuttered. The bloated head turned in the chair the eye's already bulging at the intrusion. "Sir I think Mum and me need to call an ambulance."

"What have I told you about talking during the match." The Rage shouted his hand already reaching for the belt on the wall. "You're as bad as your brother. Now we'll see if it sticks it that thick bloody skull of yours this time."

Angela said nothing even when later the police came. She had slready seen the bits of blood and flesh already caught in the links of the chain. She thought of the marks on her borthers face and head while her skin broke under the blows. She thought of the paper birds that would never flew against the sun again and the smile she would never see. Angel knew for this the Rage would burn.

She woke up. Her mind swam in blood for several seconds while her fingers flexed against the cool soil rigid with the memory of old pain. She did not try to breathe this time, there was no point buried as she was deep in the soil, but old memories died hard and her body had been human for far longer than it had been Carpathian. She tried to concentrate on not breathing, tried to tell her body it did not need the oxygen it had craved for so long. After a while her mind stilled the panic of phantom suffocation banished but the rage the dream had created burnt on. It rarely seemed to go these days. At least she had managed to block it from her family this time, the mental walls she had put between her and the small group that had crawled out of the dark horrors of the facility over a year ago grew stronger daily. They were neccessary, no one could know they deepest darkest depths of her mind, no one deserved that terror but her.

It would be time to rise soon, she could almost taste the cool night air as the sun made it's journey on the other side of the world. She felt the others begin to stir, Bow and Serenity, Jordan and Sophia, Fiske, Vespera and the baby. That had been a shock to them all, especially to Fiske. Carpathians were not meant to be the most fertile of creatures. It seemed the hybrid state they had been cocooned in for a short while after the scientists had changed them had other advantages than the high tolerance of light. Angel knew they had only a few weeks maybe before they had to make their journey back to Fiske's homeland for the birth. They would all go, even after a year of living as full Carpathians they were inexperienced and vunerable to vampires. Angel shuddered a cold tingle of fear crawled down her spine, she knew from terrible experience exactly how vunerable they were. She had been caught alone by one once for a few terrible minutes that seemed to go on for years. Angel pushed the thoughts of Albursel and the dark tunnel away, she did not want to think about that horrific night any more than she had to.

Angel knew that Vespera and Fiske had other reasons for wanting all of the group to travel with them. She was the only one who hadn't found a lifemate, she felt the unspoken hope amoungst the others that the gathering of Carpathians that usually happened around a birth would provide one. They hoped it would calm her down. Vespera had once told her, after one particuarly bad night, that lifemates were two halves of one soul each complimenting the strengths and weaknesses of the other. Angel was missing one half of her emotions, one half of her being at the moment. A storm without the calm eye in its core. Angel had snorted at the thought. She had been broken for a long time, there were no missing pieces, but secretly fears had began to grow in her mind. She would have no lifemate, she would be passed around the little bands of Carpathians until one day the rage within would grow too strong for her control and then. Part of her knew she could go to the darkness despite Fiskes assurances females did not become vampires. She had carried such darkness in her for so long how could she not be something evil. Part of her knew one day she would have to take the long slow walk towards the sunlight, to die rather than surrender to the rage within.

She felt Fiske and Bow break the surface giving the others clearance to do the same. Night had come, it was time to rise and feed. Slowly she began to move up through the soil feeling the cool damp earth scrape against her skin as she did so. She dreaded and hated the averted eyes of the others when they saw her knowing her temper was on flashpoint all the time these days. She hated even Vespera and Fiske, to whom she was closest, watching her like an unexploded time bomb. Angel broke into the night air, the anger aready beating at her heart. Tonight would be a bad night.


End file.
